[aldrint22]

Very bad experience with Etihad (preflight)

I and my family, which includes a 10 year old child, had an itinerary on 27th Nov from Kuwait to Auckland.

When we reached the airport early in the morning and ready for this long 25 hours flight, the checkin agent is informing us that we need a transit visa for Australia, having Indian passport and he can’t allow us to take the flight. The key things that needs to be noted and for which we are completely dissatisfied with Etihad is

1) When I was doing the online booking, it never notified or alterted me that if I hold certain passport, I will require transit visa. Kindly check the Emirates webpage, which alerts passenger on this kind of itinerary that ‘certain nationalities may require transit visa’. There should be an alert or pop us on this.
2) Secondly, the same itinerary was changed for dates from original booking and we had gone to your Etihad office in Kuwait. We paid handsomely for the change and still the agent / employee of Etihad did not find it important after seeing us or our passports to inform us that we may need transit visa. We are asking them to be scholars of emigration process, but know or be aware of these small things for booking purpose especially in long haul flights.

Once we were not allowed to board the flight, the ground crew at Kuwait airport was clueless on how to handle this kind of situation at 3.00 am in the morning and they kept saying that we only check in passengers. This entire trauma is undergone by my wife and child at 3.00 am in the morning.

Eventually, they told me that the only recourse is to call Abu Dhabi call center as they can’t do anything. I ended up a long call with your call center, only to find that I will be charged KD 176 per ticket, if I cancel them. Or otherwise it will go as ‘no show’. They were not very willing to help in that early morning.

So here I am struck at Kuwait airport in the morning and I had a deadline to meet in NZ. So I request them to please do something as this is a special and urgent case. They informed me that all Etihad flights go through Australia. And for me to get Australian visa it will take atleast 4-5 days as we were on Thursday night and it was a weekend that followed.

I pleaded them to return the amount to credit card instead of making the tickets open as it would be of no use to me and this being a special case. As my travel requirement was to go to NZ and your flight does not fly without going to Australia. This credit would have helped me book a flight with other airline as you could not provide what I wanted. I badly wanted the credit into my credit card as these are expensive tickets and I needed to do them immediately. But all they did was keep the ticket open which ended up me being struck in Kuwait.

So in conclusion, here I am with a extremely bad experience with my wife and child included and struck at airport in the early morning, with credit card fully utilized and inability to book a another ticket to meet my deadline and an unresponsive staff. The experience was horrific to say the least and no help came from any Etihad.

Now also sadly, here I am struck with an open ticket which is of no use to me. These are special circumstances and unfortunately it was completely mishandled by Etihad.

Traumatized guest,

Aldirn Thayalakal